All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. – Blaise Pascal

Posted by: donmihaihai | October 4, 2008

Time has changed.

Charlie Rose:
I know, but cash is said to be king now. Are you sitting on a lot of cash so that this is the time for Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffet to look carefully at a lot of opportunities.

Warren Buffett: Yeah, we want to use cash. The reason we haven’t used our cash two years ago, we just didn’t find things that were that attractive. But when people talk about cash being king, it’s not king if it just sits there and never does anything. There are times when cash buys more than other times, and this is one of the other times when it buys a fair amount more, so we use it.

Charlie Rose:
There is a time to accumulate and a time to spend.

Warren Buffett:
Absolutely. You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It’s that simple.

Charlie Rose:
What are they now?

Warren Buffett:
They’re pretty fearful. In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don’t think I’ve ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now.